{"id":312,"date":"2008-03-03T13:02:55","date_gmt":"2008-03-03T18:02:55","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/weeklyrob.com\/?p=312"},"modified":"2008-03-03T13:02:55","modified_gmt":"2008-03-03T18:02:55","slug":"violence-my-personal-biography","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/weeklyrob.com\/?p=312","title":{"rendered":"Violence (My Personal Biography)"},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/p>\n

I saw In Bruges<\/a> last night. I really liked the first 90 minutes. A lot. Then the last 17 were pretty bad. The acting was great, but the plot. No no no.<\/p>\n

Anyway. This isn’t a movie review. This is personal.<\/p>\n

I started thinking about the few times in my life that I’ve used physical force as a means to an end. I’m more the kind of guy to run from a fight than to start one, but there have been exceptions.<\/p>\n

1. First grade:<\/em><\/p>\n

The Means:<\/strong> Punched a kid in the face.<\/p>\n

The End:<\/strong> Believe it or not, I was actually defending another kid from getting punched.<\/p>\n

The Result:<\/strong> He stared at me and then we more or less walked away.<\/p>\n

The Verdict: Hero.<\/strong><\/p>\n

2. Fourth grade:<\/em><\/p>\n

The Means:<\/strong> General fight.<\/p>\n

The End:<\/strong> Self-defense. Even at the time I didn’t bother trying to find a better reason. A bunch of kids came to my house after school, and I was supposed to go outside and have a fight with one of them.<\/p>\n

The Result:<\/strong> For some reason, my mom allowed me to do this. Went outside, scrapped for a while, ended up on my back. When he came for me, I kicked him in the stomach and knocked the wind out of him. He didn’t want to fight any more, so I went home.<\/p>\n

The Verdict: <\/strong>Hero?<\/p>\n

3. 9th Grade:<\/em><\/p>\n

The Means:<\/strong> Another sort of general fight.<\/p>\n

The End:<\/strong> AGAIN with the self-defense. Again some kid wanted to fight me and I don’t know why, really. Maybe I seemed like easy pickings. Also, I was probably as much of a smart-ass then as I am now.<\/p>\n

The Result:<\/strong> This was one of those things where he says, “you take a shot first,” and then I say, “no, YOU go first.” Then he punched me!<\/p>\n

I was really surprised. I’d never been punched in the face before. It didn’t hurt in the slightest bit. I just looked at him (which I only now realize is just what happened to the other kid in the first grade).<\/p>\n

Had him in a headlock when some adult broke it up and reminded us that we were in the Sanctuary at the Temple and were basically pissing God off. I don’t think either one of us wanted to keep going.<\/p>\n

The Verdict: <\/strong>Hero?<\/p>\n

24 Years Old:<\/em><\/p>\n

The Means: Slapped a guy<\/p>\n

The End: To act tough. To get some kind of attention, maybe.<\/p>\n

The Result:<\/strong> I was in Israel, in my 4th or 5th month working on a Kibbutz<\/a>. I’d just gotten off the phone, having heard the news that my grandmother was extremely sick.<\/p>\n

Two other volunteers (Russians, as it happens) came up and asked to see my phone card for a second. Then they started playing a game about not giving it back.<\/p>\n

It was a game, as I said. I knew them, they knew me, and they would have eventually given it back. They were messing around. But I wasn’t in the mood.<\/p>\n

I told them that I’d just gotten bad news, etc., and just give me the card. They yukked it up.<\/p>\n

I said, “which one of you has the phone card.” Leonid said that he did. I slapped him. “Give it back.”<\/p>\n

Leonid jumped back, and sort of brought his arms into a kinda-sorta-don’t-know-what-to-do fighting position. His friend said, ok ok ok, here’s the card, and handed it over. Leonid hadn’t had the thing after all.<\/p>\n

The Verdict:<\/strong> Bully.<\/p>\n

I wasn’t wracked with grief. I was in control, but pretending that I wasn’t. (I know that I wouldn’t have hit a bigger guy who I didn’t know.)<\/p>\n

Leonid and I never apologized to each other. We were sheepish around each other until I left the Kibbutz. I was able to make people believe that I was right, because he should have stopped horsing around when I told him that I was upset. But whatever. I don’t know why I did it. It was the wrong thing to do, without question.<\/p>\n

28 years old:<\/em><\/p>\n

The Means:<\/strong> AGAIN slapped a guy!<\/p>\n

The End:<\/strong> Moral Defense of a girlfriend. Sort of.<\/p>\n

The Result:<\/strong> My girlfriend (now my wife) and I were on a bus in Indonesia. Westerners have a reputation for having sex with anything that moves, so occasionally we’d have to deal with people who thought they could say or do things that they otherwise couldn’t.<\/p>\n

Some youngsters (15 year-olds, maybe) were behind us on the bus, saying, in English, “I sleep with you.” “We have sex?” “Let’s make love, baby,” etc.<\/p>\n

I turned around in my seat and said something along the lines of:<\/p>\n

“Please stop talking like that. Maybe you don’t know it, but what you’re saying is bad.” My Indonesian was limited, of course, but it was good enough to get the point across.<\/p>\n

The main kid I was talking to was kind of laughing as I spoke. Maybe because of my accent, or the bad grammar. But also of course, because of the situation and his friends.<\/p>\n

It wasn’t really a slap. It was really a light tap with my fingers on his cheek. I just didn’t want to ride the next three hours with them continuing in the same vein.<\/p>\n

It worked beautifully. He was very serious and said ok whenever I said anything. His friends were serious, too, and then I thanked them and turned around. That was it for them speaking English.<\/p>\n

The Verdict:<\/strong> I know that some people will argue with me here, but I don’t think I was unequivocally wrong. I tend to think that people shouldn’t threaten physical violence to solve a non-physical problem. And yet…<\/p>\n

“Do I contradict myself?
\nVery well then I contradict myself,
\n(I am large, I contain multitudes.)”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I saw In Bruges last night. I really liked the first 90 minutes. A lot. Then the last 17 were pretty bad. The acting was great, but the plot. No no no. Anyway. This isn’t a movie review. This is personal. I started thinking about the few times in my life that I’ve used physical […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-312","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-personal"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/weeklyrob.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/312","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/weeklyrob.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/weeklyrob.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/weeklyrob.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/weeklyrob.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=312"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/weeklyrob.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/312\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/weeklyrob.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=312"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/weeklyrob.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=312"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/weeklyrob.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=312"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}